Hey, you are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, back in your feed. We got something fun scheduled for today. Hey, Brett, how are you? I am fantastic. It's Brett from the Whiskey Hotline. Hey, thanks for coming. Special guest this episode. Steve Nally from Bardstown Bourbon Company, master distiller. And I've got 53 years under my belt from working in the bourbon industry. And if you want me to tell my story, you know, it's kind of a long drawn out process, but I started in 1972 at Maker's Mark Distillery. And I started on the ground level. I worked every job down there. The first 17 years, I call it my schooling years. You know, like I said, I tried every job down there. I got experience on the job training. After 17 years, they asked me to become master distiller. That's when the distiller retired. So I assumed that position and we were bought out by several other companies, so most of the changes, I didn't see any changes in what we were doing. We still ran the distiller the way we always had ran it. And the last buyout, they made some changes. So that's kind of when I parted from there. But during that time, we really hadn't expanded. TW. Samuel didn't want to become an international product. He wanted to just pretty much be a local product. So when Bill Samuels took over, he expanded the product. So I was actually there when we did our first expansion. So I was involved in that. And we just kept growing. And everybody knows where Maker's Mark is now. Was there someone who was tabulating how much extra wax you would have to buy? That was part of the growth process. We're going to need an in wax guy. Well, it was, but it's really interesting. And that's kind of a, it's a humble way to say it. Because there are, you know, Maker's Mark went from just being by perception, a small, very high quality, very premium small producer that just did one thing. There was every once in a while, there'd be a different shape bottle or a different color wax, but really the liquid was identical to. And so your job is to make that high level of quality consistently day in, day out. So a whole bunch of things are thrown at you because of the expansion, right? Because now it's like, OK, we want you to do this, but now we want you to make 50% more than 100% more. And you had to adjust all that. What was that period like? And you didn't do the expansion. It wasn't like you added a whole bunch of extra space. You kind of crammed the expansion into the building that existed. The biggest change that we actually saw was when we were down there at the smaller amount, we had all wooden fermenters. And when we started expanding, we had to go to stainless steel fermenters because at that point, Cypress was banned. You couldn't cut Cypress to make wooden fermenters. So we had to do a lot of testing when we first started the stainless steel fermenters. Is there a difference in the product coming out? So we did some production, did some testing, and virtually there was no difference in the product. So we kept going on and doing the production and expanding slowly. This started in about 92, 93, doing the expansion. That's when Bill Samuel started taking over and started doing the expansion. And it's funny for people, you think of expansion as just like, well, we're just going to double, so we're going to do, we're going to have two times more of this and two times more. It doesn't happen like that as you went through. So you talk about the fermenters first. At what point in time in the process did you have to start adding other equipment besides the fermenters? I mean, at some point in time. That had to be a huge relief, right? Right. We don't have to maintain these Cypress wooden fermenters. Oh, they're still there. Oh, they're still there. They still use them. They're still in part of the production. So yeah, like I said, there's eight of those and they're still part of it. But now I think they have like 90-some fermenters altogether. So they just rotate through the wooden ones and incorporate the stainless steel ones. But to get back to that point, when we first started this increase in production, we went from like four days a week, eight hour shifts, we went to six days a week, seven days a week, then we went to double shifts. So we were doing all this with one steel, one column steel. And then after we got to the maximum of that steel, we had to add a second distillation column. So that meant building on to the building. All we had done before was add extra room for fermenters. So it wasn't a real big deal then. Once we added room for the fermenters, if you've been to Maker's Mark, you know, it's built right on the banks of a stream, of a little stream running through. So that was kind of a problem, you know, building a building that would house the cooker, the fermenter, and the steel on that little space. So we managed to do that. But then when they did the third steel, years after, as actually after I left, they had to really kind of jiggle around and get that, and part of it, they rerouted some of the stream. But they actually bridged over the stream to add a lot more fermenters. So you're adding stills, at what point in time, and this is the one thing from the outside looking in, having been down there, is the one thing that folks should know because you probably wouldn't say it is when there were a lot of names that had been thrown out at Maker's Mark, and the one person who was the through line was Steve Nally and wasn't necessarily the name that always got thrown out. We have some people that are here and some people that aren't here that are good friends that probably got a little bit more credit for everything that was going on without people on the inside understanding what the through line was that was actually really making sure that that production worked like a clock, right? And I think that that Correct. And, you know, when Maker's Mark was founded, you know, it was founded by the Samuels family. So they were always front and center, you know, TW. Samuels, Bill Samuels. I was an operator, a person that made it run, but I wasn't front and center. I wasn't. At that time, we were called head distillers. It wasn't until a few years later that master distiller became a term. So we were head distillers. And, you know, I was front and center. I didn't go out in public and present Maker's Mark. TW and Bill Samuels did that, which was their role, their place to do. They were the ones that, as you said, got notoriety that that's what happened. But, you know, we made the machinery work, the process happened and all. And, you know, we had, like I said, one product. We did the same thing day by day by day. And we did until I left, we was doing the same product. We always did same cook, same mash bills, same everything. The only difference we had, we had different proofs that came out, but everything else was the same. So we had 101 proof. We had one overseas Japanese product that went out that was a little bit older, little bit higher proof. It was still the same mash bill, same recipe. So other than that, there was nothing changed. And actually there's no big change until Bill Samuels left and he created 46, which was a different finish. And that's when he introduced that product. Right. But still didn't really change your piece. I mean, because it's still the same liquid. They just changed wood regimen. They just changed the finish on it. So that happened, but were you still there when 46 or had, because Beam Centauri comes on the scene? That was, I had left in 2003, 46 came out. Whenever Bill retired, I think there was like 2010 or 2011 or something like that. It was sometime later when, and Beam Centauri came on a little bit after that. So, or about that time that Beam Centauri came on. And then now that Rob is the head of the operation, then he has created a couple of other things. I know he's came out just this year with a, a weeded whiskey and you know, he's doing a few other things. Of course, they've got the stave finishes and all of those different types of finish products that are still the basic same recipe. It's just different finishes on it. So, your next stop is a long way away from Kentucky. A long way away. I actually, when Maker's Mark had sold to a couple of different outfits, and when the last outfit they sold to changed some of the retirement benefits, and I was going to lose something, so I left Maker's Mark. And I actually set out about three years, and I drove a semi delivering grain to distilleries for that time. I stayed in contact with everybody, so three attorneys from Wyoming contacted me and wanted to know if I'd be interested in coming to Wyoming and build the first distillery ever to be built in the state. I said, yeah, I'll come out there and try it. Maybe, you know, might be able to, so I'm thinking I could go out there and try what I thought I knew someplace far away that nobody would know what was going, what I was doing. If I screwed up, nobody would know it. But anyway, I went out there and built Wyoming Whiskey, got it up and running. It was a great place. It was a great atmosphere, a great environment. Everything was going good and I spent six and a half years out there. The big disagreement or thing that we had was that three and a half years of aging, they decided they wanted to release a product. I said, it's too early, don't do it. You're going to ruin everything. So anyway, during that time, Peter Lofton had contacted me about Bardstown Bourbon Process, the company. So I talked to him a little bit. I went back out there and the people at Wyoming Whiskey said, you know, we've thought about it and we own the company so we're going to release it. I said, okay, if you are, you're going to do it without me. So I went back and contacted Peter and said, okay, I'm going to join you and leave Wyoming. Interesting. And even at Wyoming, you still did, you did a lot similar to what you were doing at Maker's Mark. You were working with different forms of the greens, but you were making a weeded whiskey. Well, actually, at Wyoming, there's another story to that too. They wanted me to make a rye whiskey while I was out there. And I said, we don't have the equipment or anything to make rye whiskey. You know, I don't have enough, the big enough pumps, the fermenters, I don't have the equipment to do it, so I don't want to make rye whiskey. So they said, well, you need to make it. We want some variation of the weeded product, weeded bourbon. So I went ahead and made rye. But they didn't know till after I left that it wasn't a rye whiskey, it was rye bourbon. But anyway, after I had left and gone to Bardstown, it got old enough to bottle. At that time, they had waited till I was five years old. So they called me and said, what's the recipe? I told them, and they had a few choice words for me at that time. But anyway, they said. How would that story have played out differently? Well, what was your plan? If I had still been there, I'd probably gotten fired. But actually, the product is called Outrider, and it's the best-selling product they've got. It is arguably the best. Look, regular Wyoming whiskey is great. I mean, it's a really pretty nice weeded bourbon. But the Outrider was really a big deviation from what the Wyoming whiskey was. And I think it confused a lot of people at first, and people were sort of like, well, it's not Wyoming. It's right. It's like, who cares? It's great. Right? So, and how much did that apply? Because I guess this makes the transition, because then you leave Wyoming and you go to Bardstown Bourbon Company, which is as about as opposite of Maker's Mark as you can possibly get, where you spend 20, 30, however many years making one thing the same way, through expansion, through equipment changes, whatever, you make one thing the same way, and now you're in a facility that makes everything, anything, whatever people want. So, how was that adjustment? Well, I still call Maker's Mark my training ground, you know, that's where I learned the basics of everything. And Sam Cecil, the plant manager at the time, he was a chemist, so I learned that side of it. Plus the production side, I learned the training with my 17 years of on the job training. So, I learned both sides of it at Maker's. So, I knew the basics, you know, how to grow yeast, how to do the cooking, how to convert starches, so on and so forth. So, I learned the basics at Wyoming. I spread my wings, so to speak, a little bit with doing some rye. So, when I came to Bardstown, you know, times had changed and by doing custom production, we got to fill other clients, other people with their needs. I kind of opened my mindset, you might say up a little bit, that, okay, I've got to start doing other stuff. And, you know, with that in mind, we had some. And then, when we started doing collaborations and discoveries and that, that just kind of spread, you know, your mindset or your thought pattern. So, you know, you start out by doing, basically we did our, basically three products to start with. We didn't do the high wheat until just a little bit later, but we did basically three products. And then, with doing, I think the first year we did about 15 clients, 15 customers, that we did different recipes for us. We sat down with them and talked about the possibilities. And then that just kind of opened the gates to do other things. And then the very first collaboration we did, we actually did with Pfeiffer Pave, which is a wine producer out in California, that we did that with and that kind of set the basis to do other things. When that started progressing along, and we got to get the flavors that we were getting out of the barrels, the way we did it, then it just kind of opened the gates to start doing other things, and experiment with other things. And one thing led to another, and we've just done so many now that it's just try a little bit of everything. We've tried some things that haven't been good. There's a few samples in my desk, or in my file cabinet at the office that never made it to the... Now, have you ever had anybody walk in with a mash bill that you just look at them and shake your head and say, yeah, no, this isn't working? Well, we've talked to people that want to do things or want to do a process. We say, if you want to do it, do it someplace else. We can't do it. They'll want to put some funny fruit or something in it that, no, we're not going to do it. I'm not going to say it can't be done, but we won't do it. And it's just something that, if we can't talk them out of it, you know, we had one customer who came in that our normal process is three-day fermentation, 72-hour fermentation. We had one customer come in and wanted to do a 96-hour fermentation. It can be done, but that disturbs our normal process. So, in order to do his process, we was going to have charged him 140% surcharge to do it. Well, he didn't want to pay that. And I said, well, that's what it would take to do that. And if you don't want to pay that, then we can't do it. Because that just stretches our process out to either not be able to do somebody else's, or it makes you run over on what we do. Yeah. See, for anybody that ever travels into Bourbon country, and especially in the Bardstown, it's well worth your while to make a visit to the Bardstown Bourbon Company Distillery right off the Bluegrass Parkway, just because, you know, what you're talking about, I've been there a few times, and I've spoken to you in the distillery a few times, and to me, one of the most fascinating things is how you make so many different things and are able to actually cleanly regiment everything and get it I think it's important right now to point out just how messy Brett's office is. Well, let's don't touch on that. He'll ruin his image. Oh, no, anybody that's seen me knows it. Look, if they look at me, they're like, yeah, I bet you I know what his office looks like. Well, there's two things that we set the whole company up for was, first of all, Pete wanted the company to be transparent. You know, if you take a tour through there, everything in there is visible. You know, from the, if you come in with a recipe, that recipe is going to be displayed on the board. If you don't want, do not want your name associated with that recipe, we'll put a code name up there. But if you do, don't care, then your name is going to be up there. Second thing is there's a lot of glass in the building and the equipment. You know, the cooker has a glass in the dome of it. The steel has glass in it, the fermenters are all open top. So everything is transparent. If you go to the warehouse, we will actually pull samples out of the barrel, which I don't know of anybody else that does that. But you get full experience or exposure to everything that's there. So that was one of the first things you did. And then we set the equipment up to where if I switch from one recipe to the other, I can do a 15 minute water clean between them. And if I go from a wheated recipe to a rye recipe, I can do a caustic clean and completely clean that system in less than an hour. And get it clean and make that transfer. And like some other companies, it might take them a half day to clean their equipment all out and get it, all the gaskets, valves, everything in that distillery sanitary, it's all food grade. So it's very, very easy to clean and get transferred from one to the other. You were probably at the beginning maybe doing a little bit more contract stuff than you were doing your own just because that's cash flow. How long did it take for you to dial in, you said the three recipes that are now the hallmark of Bardstown Bourbon Company labeled bourbon, how long did it take you to dial those three recipes in? It didn't take very long. We were set up that I had in my mind basically two of them, and then we developed the third one as we were doing the first two. What are those three recipes? One of them is 20% wheat, one of them is 36% rye, which we call Kentucky Strait, and the last one is a 95% rye whiskey. And then the fourth one that we have is a 39% wheat bourbon that we developed about a year later. So that's the four origin products that we have in our portfolio. To expand on that a little bit, we got those pretty much in place. You know, it took probably the first cook or two to kind of get all the equipment dialed in because we had an excellent team that built the distillery, Buzix that did that, Logical Control put all the control system in. They've been doing controls for years and years. I've known David and his dad, Reggie. They did work for me at Maker's Mark. So I've known them for years. Lion's Company did all the mechanical work. So I've worked with those guys for years. So they knew exactly what to do. If I said put this line in 90 degrees this way and then 45 that way, they didn't question. They did it and went on. So that makes it a lot easier for me. I know some of the other people that built distilleries, they'd have like another contractor that never built a distillery. So they had to tear out lines and put them in, tear them out, put them in. And it makes it hard to do when you do stuff like that. And when you have to backtrack, you don't get a lot done. And then when you do, you try to run it, it doesn't run. So it's just tough when you've got people to know what they're doing. It goes in, it works. And that makes it a whole lot easier to start up. And that also accounts for the expansion. You guys have recently done a pretty sizable expansion. Right. Yeah. And we put the third steel in. I mean, it was part of our fermenting room. We just add a little bit on to it, drop the third steel in. Then we had enough fermenters on to our present distillery to accommodate what we needed. And it was fairly simple. And we did it while we were running, about 90% of it. And then we shut down long enough to do the tie in. And that was it. So it went pretty easy. When did you guys start playing around with all the different wood finishes? Or where, who was the impetus, or where did that come from? That's pretty much a team effort. We started doing discoveries, maybe the second year we were there, when we did Discovery 1, that was kind of the first strike at it. And then when we started doing the collaborations, that was probably the third year that we were there, that we started doing those, and we just expanded on it. And we, you know, from basically the wine was the first one, and then we started doing some beer finishes, and then we just kind of expanded on the Cognac and Ferrand and different woods with, you know, the European woods, like the Mezzanero and Japanese, and, you know, just French oak and so on and so forth. And as we got our name out there a little bit of how we did things, different companies, different countries got kind of at ease that, okay, they're going to do a good job of it. So now these places are kind of coming to us, or if we say we want to do something, they say, yeah, we'll let you do it. And some of these companies are products that we do collaborations with. They won't give their logo to somebody, and we put our logo, their logo on the back of every bottle. We do a collaboration with it, and it's not every company that will let that happen to. And we do it, nobody questions it anymore. Sure. Yeah, that, I mean, that is a big deal. And you were definitely as a producer, the other people played with it, but you guys really did it right and at scale. And we're probably the first people, which was very innovative to do it at scale. One of the biggest difference, I think, is that every product we do, every collaboration we do, we get barrels sent to us wet. And wet being the normal process of anybody emptying a beer barrel or a wine barrel or whatever, they will empty it, they will rinse it, and it will pretty much dry out. When we get a product from somebody, they'll empty it, they'll leave a little bit of juice in it, and they will cold ship it to us. They'll wrap it in cellophane wrap, put it on a refrigerated trailer, express ship it to us, so when we get it, that liquid that's in it's preserved, we get the full benefit of that barrel flavor with our product. So we get more flavor than somebody else do a dry barrel, they're not going to get much out of it. So we do a wet barrel. We do a pretty extensive single barrel program, and one of the uses, because we get a lot of the cuprage when we're done, we like to work with a lot of local breweries, and turn them over to make strong beers that we then have barrel-aged for different projects and the same thing. The first question is, what was the dump date? And how fast can you, I mean, we're not dealing with crossing oceans, but we're still dealing with getting companies to send us things even from Kentucky, which can take a little bit of time, so people don't understand. There's a big difference between just buying a wine barrel and getting the proper wine barrel, especially the wine barrels are probably the most sensitive, right? Because they don't necessarily, because of the strength of the liquid that's in it, that they're more prone to infections and bacteria and things like that versus something that come from another distilled product, which is going to be pretty clean We've also had wet barrels show up at stores, and they're like, what are we supposed to do with this? Dumping the leftovers off the edge of a loading dock just to get it out of there. We have a couple of things that we want to try that I think that are important. Like, the first thing... Are these sneak peek items? So, one of them is the Discovery Release Series 13, which is the newest one. That's the newest one that will come out in a couple of weeks. So, this is a double barrel product, so tell us about the Discovery Series, because that's a critical piece of your branding. Right, yeah, this is, as all Discovery Series are, they're a blend of product that is not Bardstown Bourbon's product. They're a product that we purchase, and this one is all Kentucky, if I remember right. Yeah, it's a nine, two nines, a 15, and an eight-year-old product. They're all Rye-based products, and as we do all of our products, it's listed on the side label, the age, the percentage, and where it comes from, which we cannot list the distillery, but we list the state it comes from. That's part of our transparency, that we list exactly where it comes from. Now, I think that one's 110.8, is that right, proof? Yes, it is 110.8. I'm holding the sample bottle, not the finished product, but also I didn't know that you could hot foil press a spreadsheet onto the side of a bottle, but that's pretty impressive. Yeah. It's all in foil press. Am I going to love this? I hope so. But this is the latest Discovery. Like I said, it's going to be released in the next couple of weeks. So it's just been bottled, it's just been sent out. This is a sample that Nikki got hold of to have at this podcast. Cool. So we're starting with the special stuff. The sneak preview of Discovery series. Yeah, we're starting with the special stuff. This is a rye whiskey, but it's a blend of rye whiskeys. This is, where's the bottle? Did I read that right? It's over there. This is their rye forward bourbons. Oh, rye forward bourbons. Yeah, rye forward bourbons we've got. I think the highest one in there maybe is 21 percent. Yeah, and some is a little bit less than that. Yeah, 74.18, 79.10, 75.13, 70.21. This is just characteristic of what I'm used to, Bardstown bourbon putting out. This is a polished, full-bore bourbon. Right. It's funny that we talk about this because the discussion starts because you're like a legendary production person in the state of Kentucky and in the business. But you're also heavily involved in the blending process as well, right? Correct. I mean, it's not just running the machinery. You have to taste these things and approve. So what are the steps to construct something like this in the Discovery Series? Well, there's several steps involved in this. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, these are all products that we do not develop. These are products that we have a person that goes out and purchases aged products from other companies. So once those products are purchased, then we will go in and blend those products together to develop the discovery product, which will be the finished product. So we got this together and it really wasn't exactly what we was hoping for. So if you notice on there, it says double barreled. So we put this blend into another barrel and it says on there that that's American and what is it, Mesonar oak? Double barreled in American and Hungarian oak. Hungarian oak. So it's two oaks, but that Hungarian oak has a very unique flavor profile. So you notice after you get those oaky, tobacco, leathery, all those tastes in there, then you get a totally different taste to it. To me, it's a little bit woody, but it's a dry wood. It doesn't have that forward wood that American oak has. So it's a totally different taste to it. Yeah, Hungarian oak is interesting. We did something with High West years ago. Their regular product, but finished in American oak, finished in French oak, finished in Hungarian oak. And that was the first time you thought, because everybody basically in the oak world, you think there's either a Quercus alba American oak, or there's the Quercus rubeus or whatever, or the European oak, which might be a little different in Spain and France and not. But everything in Eastern Europe is totally different from what they're growing in France. Oh yeah. And you're right, the Hungarian oak, like some of the stuff that grows in the Balkans is really interesting because of that. It's not the combination of flavors that you get that aren't just what you would expect out of typical American oak, like the vanilla and the roundness and the softness, but not quite as much of the heavy spice that you get out of some French oak. So, I mean, you know, it's just, like I say, it's a totally different finish than you get out of anything else. When you put together the Discovery Series, you're given, it sounds like a limited amount of things that are put together. Do you do the design of the blend and then figure out whether or not it needs some finishing, or do you put together blends specifically because I have these casks I know I want to use. So I'm going to make a blend because I want to use these casks. No, you put together the blend that you think works, and then you see how many casks of that, like if I did 10% of this cask, 10% of that one, then you see how many casks I have of that to make that blend. Because that's for instance, Discovery 12 was a very, very small blend because the blend we came up with, there wasn't a lot of cask of that combination to make it. And this one is not a huge release. It's less than 3000 cases if I remember right. So when you spread that out over the whole country, there's not going to be a huge number of cases available. So it's not a huge release. But when you make that blend together, that's what it happened. And then we had the availability of the Hungarian oak to give it a totally different finish. So we went with the double barrels to enhance the flavor that we ended up with, to be, throw it off and be a different flavor profile from what the norm is. Yeah. No, that's great. It's fun because everybody wants it. And then sometimes our stores have to deal with the fact that everybody wants it and there isn't enough for everybody. And you guys have certainly had more than a few releases that have really, that have really set off a lot of, a lot of, a lot of a feeding frenzy of, you know, folks trying to get their hands on it because they know that whatever they buy is going to be good. So this is a blend that you guys are working on, which you just tried the Origin series, a blend that was an early thing that you guys did, because obviously when you start a distillery, you don't have aged product. We know that you have certain standards, obviously. You know, just the Wyoming story relates that, that you can't really bottle anything until it's ready, and the liquid will tell you when it's ready, right? You don't get to decide, the liquid gets to decide. So now let's talk about a couple of things that you did make. All right. So we've got a couple in the Origin series. These are 100 percent distilled. 100 percent distilled at Bardstown Bourbon Company. And they're both six years old. And there's products that you can get them on the market that are less than six years old. And I look at them as, you know, you can get pretty good, good and great. And I think when they get to just say the four year old, they can be a pretty good product. When they get to the five year old, I kind of judge it as a seesaw. You know, you get this certain flavor profile. And then at five years old, you get a little more of this flavor. And a lot of the flavor comes out of the wood. When you get six years old, you get so much flavor out of the wood. And it just gives you a really, really good mouth feel. And another thing, the alcohol starts to mature and you get less of that alcohol burn. So you're not fighting the alcohol part of it. And you get so much more satisfaction out of it from the flavors out of the barrel and the product that you develop. So when you're not fighting the alcohol, you enjoy this flavor that you've produced and enhance out of the barrel. So when you're not fighting the alcohol, you really enjoy the other. How much variance, because you guys have pretty standard warehousing. So how much experimentation you have to do with different levels? Because I'm assuming that when you make something, you spread it all over the place, so as to like mostly to mitigate risk. So if something happens to one warehouse, then you don't lose a whole vintage, or you don't lose a whole month, or six months, or whatever production. So how much do you have to play around with different floors? And how much variance after six years are there between the different floors? Well, we have to fight a couple of different things with... When we first started, 70% or 80% of what we produced was somebody else's. So we were filling warehouses as fast as the contract was building them. So we were right on their heels filling warehouses. So we didn't have the luxury of putting ours exactly where we wind it. So it is spread all over the different floors. We're still fighting that battle. We're still filling them as fast. We have 23 warehouses up now, but we're still fighting that battle. So when we go to harvest them or pull them out, we pull from the upper floor gets hotter, it ages faster, it's going to have a little more heat to the flavor of it. The lower part of it is slower, it's going to be a little more sweet, a little more smooth. Middle is kind of a mediocre spot. So when we pull out, we pull from different parts of the warehouse, blend it together to get a consistent flavor profile. So that's kind of the animal that you fight with when you're blended together to get any of these products, whether it's the high wheat, the bottling bond or the rye or whatever it is, you're fighting that same animal. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. We're trying the wheat, and just so everybody knows that we're lucky us. Yeah. This is a 39 percent wheat, which is one of our origins, and it's a really good product, has a really good sweet, smooth finish, and it's one of them. It sort of goes back to your origins too, except Maker's Mark isn't. It's interesting that you could have just milled it in and said, well, this worked at Maker's Mark, so let's just do it here. But this is a wildly different mash mill than what's done at Maker's. Well, it's enhanced. It's quite a bit higher wheat. Maker's Mark is a lower wheat percentage, so this is quite a bit higher. In fact, it's almost double, not hardly, but almost double the wheat. I feel like it's sweeter on the front of the tongue, and it expands and develops quite a bit more flavor profile. It's more apple-y, cinnamon-y, gives you more flavor on the taste than Maker's Mark does. But it's about the same age. I think Maker's, for the most part, is about six, seven years old. What do they say? It has to be six seasons, so at least six summers, whether that's six years in one month or almost seven. Yeah. They claim it's six years, six seasons, as you said. Yeah. No, that's interesting. For those of you who like, just if you haven't had this and you like weeded bourbon, if you're drinking Maker's, if you're chasing Weller, if you're chasing Pappy, if you're chasing some of the other weeders, don't sleep on this one. Yeah. And I know that, I think this is, is this our number one seller of the three? I think this is our number one seller of the three or four marks that we carry by a lot. So clearly people know what's going on here. Well, that's delightful. It's so easy to drink. And the spice, the caramel. Yeah. Now, what would be the next? Wait. How much? $49.99. $49.99? I would have had the Binny's app, you guys. Yeah. It is. I remember looking at it now. Yeah. $49.99, which relative to that age and for what else is on the shelf, that's a sweet spot. That's a nice price. That's fabulous. So now another, which isn't something that is a grain bill that you had made for years and years and years, but you're still making extremely well, is your Bottled and Bond. This is a standard bourbon with rye as the small grain. No, that's weeded. Oh, this is weeded? That's weeded also. Bottled and Bond, 20% weeded. Spreadsheets on the side of the bottle, dude. That's right, spreadsheets on the side. So, this is 20% weed? Correct. That's the very first product we made. That's my baby. That's the one that I created out of the gate. That's one I wanted to make from get-go. So, that's the one that I call my baby. But it's a full six years old. The fight that I had to put up for the release of it is when it got four years old, management said, well, let's release it. It's pretty good. And I said, well, you didn't say what I wanted you to say. So at five years old, they said, well, it's good now. I said, we still didn't say what I wanted to hear you say. So at six years old, they said, dang, I'm glad we waited. It's great now. I said, that's what I wanted to hear. But it takes that point that the alcohol starts to go away, that bite and the flavors all come to be. This is a hundred proof, of course. They knew you weren't bluffing. You're like, I will leave. Yeah, I bet he will. They knew I had. But this has got Banellas, Caramels, you know, it's got the the ridge apple, raisin, you know, all the characteristics. A little bit of tobacco. It's just got all the good characteristics. Very easy drinking. Kind of creamy. Yeah. I like to take this and pour it over just one big cube of ice. Let it set for a minute. Just sip on it. It's just very, very easy. This is also another one for your Weeder fans out there. Yeah, this is great. This is great. It's good you made the market. I think that one of the, to me, one of the most difficult things about the distilleries that were built in the time that Bardstown Bourbon Company was built was the lack of ability to establish an identity. And a lot of people did, just like you and Castle & Key, which we didn't mention earlier, was another one where I think that some distilleries had troubles establishing an identity because of so much contract work. And you guys seem to have done a very good job of staying locked in on what you were doing for yourselves, while you were doing all these other, you know, wildly different, wildly different mashmills and production styles. Well, a big difference in, you know, at that time, when Peter came up with this idea was, you know, normally when people at that time were starting up distilleries, they were doing vodkas and gins and that kind of stuff. And if you go in a store and look on the shelf, there's hundreds of those products and the profit margin is very, very slim. So you have trouble making it by doing those products. And then you have to spend so much time changing back and forth. And by doing the custom production, you know, you've got about a 30 day turnaround that I get the grains in, produce it, get it in the barrel, paychecks coming in. So you get a very short turnaround. Because once it's in the barrel, it's your product. So it's time to pay me. So that's kind of the turnaround on it. And I was doing 70, 80 percent. Well, at the time I was doing 80, now I'm doing 70 percent somebody else. So I'm doing 80 percent for you, 20 percent for myself. So I'm putting mine away and letting it age. So I don't have to have an immediate, you know, turnaround on everything. So stepping into this production facility that was designed to be able to give anybody any custom thing that they wanted outside of 96-hour fermentation. Have you ever felt a little bit spoiled for choice that you have like any option you could possibly want? Not really. You know, I mean, I didn't realize it. We was in a meeting the other day and I was told that we have worked with or had some kind of relationship with over 400 people. That's wild. 400 different companies, companies as customers. And you know, whether it's been bottling or storage or and I, well, we don't do just storage. We either produce or bottle far but we have relations with over 400 companies in the time we've been there in just over 11 years. I said, that's got to be wrong. I can't believe we dealt with that many people. But you know, it's and we've done about 60 some recipes in that time. And one year we did 40 some different recipes in one year. And that's every quarter. So you change that four times a year. That's 160 some recipes, change overs. So but if we in one day, we can produce 300 barrels. And have you found is sort of the, you know, bourbon, bourbon was on a meteoric rise for a number of years and it's not, it's still, it's a growth category, but it's, it's slowed and matured significantly. Is that proportion changing or there? How is the contract part of it going? Are you reducing that in size? Are people dropping out? Are you still getting people that are coming new? What's that environment like right now? Right now, it looks like it's kind of an adjustment period. The first quarter looks like that people are kind of backing up and recalculating, refiguring and seeing what's going on. There's been new companies come on that's doing the same thing we're doing, and everybody's looking around saying, okay, I can get this done cheaper, better here. Well, we're proven. They know what we can do. So if they can go someplace else and get a better deal, then try it and see. You know, we know what we can do, and we can't do it any cheaper. So, you know, if we'll do what we can do, and that's all we can do. But we think that, you know, right now we've got product on the market. These other companies don't have. So we're doing good with our product. You know, we're not doing great with our contract right now. We're doing okay. So... But you can replace the capacity with just by making your own. I mean, you can shift into making your own product if contracting. Are you prepared to shift into coconut banana rum? Uh, no, no. Okay. I don't grow a lot of bananas right now. Or coconut, either one. Those are two that are coming, and we're going to go back and finish with one, which is a bottling that is upcoming. And this isn't the first collab with this particular Cognac producer, but every other one that has come out has been gangbusters. Are we teasing people by trying this on the show? Well, I'm told that it's not coming out until mid-August. Okay. And I believe that this podcast will air before mid-August. So this is dropping in a week or two. And we're going to have enough of it that everybody who wants one can get one. Oh, God, no. Okay, hurry up and get out there and grab your bottle. Nerds, listen up. That is, well, there's, we just put pressure on, we just push her on, the Midwest state manager is here, so she's now frantically on the cell phone calling productions like Double, Triple. Okay. We don't have that many barrels. This is a, on the principle of discovery, but I noticed by reading the Glenn Bill on the side, that this also has, this isn't just all contract, you're starting to use some of your own liquid here. We're using a little bit of our liquid as well. And you're not calling this discovery. No, it's not a discovery, it's a collaboration. It's just a collab with Pierre Frant, our good friends at Pierre Frant, the cognac producer. Because we use their barrels to finish in. They do make coconut and pineapple rum, just for the record. They make a fantastic pineapple. It's really good. Give me, give me. All right, thank you. You can take care of reading what's on the side. I can barely read this. I have to catch the light on the gold foil at the right angle in order to read the side of the bottle. I didn't think I was that old, but it happened. A little by a little and then all at once. Believe me, it won't get any better. Yeah, so is this another one? Did you have an idea of a blend that you were going to construct or did you construct a blend and say, hey, these are going to be perfect for froncast? Well, again, this was something that kind of came on what was available and then we put it in the barrels because they became available and we have done this before, so when we got a chance, we put together these and then we added, well, it's only 7 percent, but we add a little bit of our 95 rye to it to enhance it. So it makes it just a great combination to be in. What do you think? Let's see, this is fantastic. So this is still going to be called a bourbon? No, it will not be a bourbon because it's got the rye in it. Yeah, blend of straight whiskeys. So it's a rye in it, so it's declassified as a bourbon. So you don't fudge and say, well, we put this proportion, so it's still over 50% corn? No. I know a lot of people. I wonder about that sometimes. It has that one rye product in it, so it's not a bourbon anymore. That's good. I think that personally that that's fantastic that you do that. A lot of people, again, would say, well, if you add up everything together, the grain total and you do the math, it's still 51% corn. So we're going to shoehorn it and try to call it a bourbon, rather than just saying, no, this is what we did. We're not cheaters. Yeah, this is what we did. You're showing your work more than most do. Well, I mean, once you show that, whatever you say is clearly on the bottle, so lie, lie if you want it to. You've already printed it, so it's there. But yeah, once you put that rye in, it declassifies it as a bourbon. I wish I could have tried this before the rye, because it is already like fruitcake, this big fruity, caramely ball. And I imagine you put the rye in there to buff it up a little bit, to toughen it up. But I kind of want to try like the molasses, maple syrup that it used to be. No? Because everything you make is so polished and structured and balanced, it's all so impeccable. I'm frustrated here. That's not silly. A lot of that I think is just changing and using that different wood. Not only is French oak different than American oak and different than Hungarian oak and other parts of Europe, what it was used for, how long it was used makes a difference. Because if you go to a cognac producer, there's really no such thing technically as a cognac single barrel, because every cognac might switch barrels 10 times in its lifespan. They fill in the new wood generally, but then a very short period of time, they're going to test and sometimes things advance quicker than other things, so they'll take it out of the new wood and they'll spread it around. Some may stay, some goes into stuff that's been almost neutral. It's been used so much and some is somewhere in between, and then they consistently taste through and blend years and blend vintages, so you lose that ability to have a true single barrel. Well, you know what I'm saying? What we've tried here today are four separate fingerprints, unique characteristic separate whiskeys, but they all share this like perfect balance and polish. We at Bardstown, the only thing that we want to try to keep a consistent flavor profile is our origins. Everything else, we don't want Discovery 13 to taste like Discovery 12. You know, that's not part of what we're trying to do. Ferron, this one, we don't want it to taste like the last Ferron. We want it to be different. That's not what we're trying to do, is copycat one after the other. And I think that the shape of this is going to appeal to your Cognac Drinker too. And anybody who's interested in the more robust fruit qualities that that can bring, they're going to love this too. Yeah. That's not what we're trying to do. And that's when somebody comes, if they get a whole bottle of this, I don't want them to say, well, that tastes different than the other one. Yeah. That's what I wanted to do. Well, you want them to understand that it's absolutely to taste different. But the first one was so good, I got to try the second one. Yeah. I mean, that's the idea of it. I hope you do try the second one. I hope you like it too. But if you don't, then don't think you had to like it because you like the first one or the second one. Don't think you have to because of the other one. Because I want them to be different. They're supposed to be. Well done. And if they don't like it, it's cause the Barrel I paid in, wasn't it? Where are you going to work next? I asked that at the wrong moment. Where are you going to work next? At home. Retired. I don't know when I'm going to retire. Donna says I'm never going to retire. Why would you retire? Well, why I'd do something I don't like when I love this. Fair enough. You're able to travel a little bit. I mean, it's not just drudgery. Looking at it still every single day. Yeah. I mean, I think that you're able finally to get out. Like I said, you've worked for other companies where other people were by de facto made the personalities of the business, and so it's good to have you be able to come and do things like talk to us about what has been a great career and what's still Yeah, exactly. I hear people all the time that, well, I left the job and I'm doing this now and I hate it, but why would I want to do something like that if I love what I'm doing now? So, I'm going to keep doing it as long as I'm near here. People like that will put up with me and I can come visit you and you put up with me. So, I mean, if I can travel around the country, I'm great. If we get overseas, maybe I can do some overseas trips. There you go. Those kind of things. Yeah, suggest, Spain is nice in the winter, suggest that they launch Spain next. There you go. I like that. We've had apple, cinnamon, honey, cherry, and now blackberry. What's the next big innovation flavor in the bourbon industry? I don't know. I think he is telling me to go **** myself. Yes. You have to eat, you got to drop on it. You couldn't resist, could you? No. I mean, it is a good question because you guys, your innovation is in a different path, but that really, I mean, that's innovation. How in touch do you stay with some of the old vets that are still around in the business that are working for the bigger companies? Are you pretty well in touch with them? Do you spend, are you able to spend any time, or do you have anybody from smaller startups come in and try to spend time and try to learn and talk? We're a pretty close group. I mean, it hadn't been too many weeks ago. I went and spent a couple of hours with Jimmy Russell. You know, I sat and talked with him, and I spent some time with Fred and Freddie Noe. Did you have him? Yes, he's not in. You don't go to the Noe House. You don't go to the Noe House in Bardstown without him. Yeah, I had him. Talked to Danny Potter not long ago. They've just started up a new facility up in... Is that running now? It's running now. It's in Springfield, right? Or closer to Springfield? It's in Springfield, Danny and Jane. Yeah, they've just started up. Actually, my grandson is working with them. So, I have close contact. I can keep up with... If they're doing anything I want to know about, I'll hear about it. Okay, that's the other facet of the bourbon industry. Everybody has family working for everybody. Right. So, you know, I keep close contact with a whole lot of them. I mean, the bourbon industry, that's been one great thing about the industry. We're like one big family. I mean, when I was growing up in the industry, if I had any trouble, I could contact Jimmy or Booker or Parker Beam or any of those guys and I could ask questions, they'd tell me, they would help me out. I mean, you know, I always relate back to the big heaven hill fire. When that happened, other than other companies saying, good, you're out of business, we get more sales, they jumped in and some of them produced farms, some of them sold them barrels, some of them, they kept them going. And now they just lost the $240 million distillery in Bardstown. So they're back home, you know. Everything is going good and they don't shove them out the door and push them away. Outstanding. No, that's great. It's always good to hear because there's a generation that's changing and I know that there's the generation that I was introduced to and I grew up with is still holding on a few of them. But you've already changed going from Booker to Fred and then Fred to Freddie. I mean, especially on the Beam side, going from Jimmy to Eddie and now to Bruce, who's got some involvement in Wild Turkey. So it's nice to see, sticking with the family. So hopefully, we're talking to your grandson in 25 years or 20 years or 10, and asking him what his path has been. Eddie and Bruce, we're talking about Judas Priest. Right. For clarification, yes, Jimmy Russell, Eddie Russell, Jimmy Russell, Eddie Russell, and Bruce Russell. Cool. I'm stoked that we have Steve to add to the pantheon of distillers that keep the industry running and humming in Kentucky, and also have joined us on Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. There's your outro. I really appreciate your time with us today. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here. You have, I'm sure, hours and hours more stories, but we cap this thing in time. These are tasting amazing. These whiskeys always taste amazing. I hate being a fanboy, but there are a couple of opportunities like this. I'm pulling rank, I'm on this episode and I'm going to try not to gush. This is one of them. If you like listening to this podcast as much as I like drinking these whiskeys, leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. We'll be back in your feed with something pretty great pretty soon. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Brett. And I'm Steve. Keep tasting.